The Shell
by richardbuxton
Summary: Whispers of The Little Mermaid influence this tale of an empire's rise and fall.


**The Shell**

Richard Buxton

The beginning of the world was full of chaos and light; it was a riot of colour, heat and energy. Land and sea began to flow together, enfolded by night and day, and time took its first, tentative steps towards infinity. Into this chaos something was flung, as if by accident: a being or consciousness, we'll call it the "Spirit". The Spirit basked in the flow of Creation and, unknowingly, it acquired all of the powers of making and un-making to which it was exposed. When, at last, the world was complete, the Spirit awoke deep in a primordial ocean, and began to swim.

The ocean was teaming with life: silver shoals, forests of coral, clouds of thriving plankton; all these the Spirit watched in wonderment. It soon learnt to take on the form of the animals it saw, and it joined them in their day to day lives. The Spirit never thought itself special, never saw the true potential of its powers. But there were some who did.

Unlike the other creatures of the sea, the Merfolk knew of Greed and, with what little magic they knew they captured the Spirit. The leader of the Merfolk imprisoned the Spirit inside a shell and wore it around her neck. In this way, she could wield a small fraction of the Spirit's power, and use it to her own ends.

The Merfolk used the power of the Shell to spread their influence across the sea: bringing order where there had been freedom; uniformity where there had been beauty. On land, meanwhile, a race of dusty apes descended from the treetops and found that the earth beneath their feet was to their liking. So, just as the sea had succumbed to the Merfolk, the land succumbed to Man.

Years passed, and the lords of land and sea lived out their quiet tyranny in ignorance of one another. On one island a great stone castle was built. The king was immensely proud of his castle and, every evening, he took off his clothes and swam out to a rock. From there he could see the whole castle, lit up by the sun's dying rays. Not once did he turn and look out over the sea, for so content was he with his kingdom that he could not imagine desiring anything else.

One day a young mermaid, a slave to curiosity, swam up to the surface and saw the King on his rock. She fell in love at once, and swore she would do all in her power to live out her life as his Queen. She knew, however, that mermaids would be repulsive to human eyes: they were covered in spines and scales, and had enormous yellow eyes to help them see in the gloomy depths. If only she had some way to make herself human! But wait – perhaps she did. All she needed was the magic Shell, and everything she'd ever dreamed of could be hers.

The mermaid waited until her leader was sleeping and quietly whisked the Shell from around her neck. She quickly returned to the surface, drawing all the while from the power of the Shell. When the King swam out to his rock that evening, he found a beautiful woman waiting for him. They were soon promised to be married and, as a token of her affection, the new Queen gave him the Shell. She warned him, though, that he must never lose it, for the spell binding the Spirit would be broken if the Shell were ever to fall from its owner's hands.

The Merfolk soon learned of this treachery and set out to reclaim the shell by force. A great battle took place on the beach below the castle walls: the Merfolk sent giant crabs and all kinds of venomous creatures up into the shallows where they were met by the spears and shields of the King's army. For a moment, it looked like the men would be overrun, but then the King himself came amongst them. Through the power of the Shell he rallied his army and cast the creatures back into the sea. The Merfolk, defeated, sank beneath the waves and out of human history.

Some days later, the King and Queen were married. After the celebrations, they retired to a room in the highest tower of the castle and made love for the first time. The Spirit looked at the couple as they slept and was shocked to discover new life growing in the Queen, like a seed taking root. The Spirit had long since given up hope of finding in Man the goodness and fertility of the world it remembered but perhaps, with its help, they could be saved.

Dawn rose, hard and crimson, over the island. The King, with the Shell secured around his neck, swam out to his rock. He smiled at his kingdom, safe and prosperous under his rule. But something felt different on that morning, and the King found himself turning to look out over the sea. As daylight crept across the world he saw something strange on the horizon, and there, another! They were islands, continents, new lands. The people of those lands would have castles like his, soldiers and ships too, but they did not have the Shell.

The Spirit watched the child inside the Queen grow and, as the kingdom celebrated the birth of the new Prince, it reached out and touched his dreams. The Spirit filled the Prince's dreams with pictures of the world it had once known: of animals, oceans and distant places. As time went on and the Prince blossomed into a young man, he wished to explore and protect those places, not realising that he had been taught to do so by the Spirit. The King, who had spent those years expanding his empire through conquest, disapproved of this, and set about re-educating the boy in the ways of governance, of the sail and the sword. The Prince's dreams were soon replaced by more practical ambitions, and this the Spirit could not forgive.

As the King's empire grew larger, so too did the rebellion against his rule. The Queen, meanwhile, was pregnant with their second child, but the strain was proving too much for her body, and she was dying. When the Queen entered labour the rebels made their move, amassing a vast fleet to attack the island. The King stood on his rock and watched the fleet approaching until it seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. Even the power of the Shell would not be enough to defeat such a force! The King, in his agony, lost his grip on the Shell, and it fell from his grasp. Desperately he leapt after it, but, as soon as the Shell touched the sea, the Spirit was released.

The Spirit stretched. It felt the its full power returning; realised how little of its potential had been used by its captors. It found that it couldn't remember much of the world before its imprisonment after all, but of one thing it was certain: there was no place for humans or merfolk in that world. So the Spirit picked up the King and snapped him in two, then it set upon the rebel fleet and turned the ships, one by one, into showers of splinters. Next, it dived into the ocean and scoured every merfolk from the depths, before doing the same to the humans on land.

At last, the Spirit returned to the King's island and moved up the beach towards the castle, killing as it went. By the time it reached the castle the halls and corridors were empty and silent: the people, sensing their doom, had fled into the countryside or out to sea. The Spirit moved up the castle, floor by floor, cleansing it of all evidence of the King's rule. At the top of the tallest tower, however, it found something unexpected: the Queen lay bleeding on a bed, her baby daughter beside her. The girl's passage into the world had mortally wounded her mother, without whom she could not survive. The Queen, in full knowledge of the destruction around her, had chosen to spend her last moments bringing a new life into the world.

The Spirit recoiled from what it saw. The contradictions of the efforts of mother and daughter seemed to echo its own pain. It decided that there had been enough destruction in the world. The land and sea had been ruined, but there was one place where the Spirit could start afresh. So it gathered the pair up, mended their wounds and bore them up into the sky. There they remain, to this day: the mother, the daughter and the Spirit. Sometimes when you look up you might see them there, if the clouds align just right, but it will only be for an instant. For they have no interest in us, and no intention of ever setting foot on land again.


End file.
